J Parkington

Biographic Data

ID792
NAMEJ Parkington
GIVEN NAMESJ
FAMILY NAMEParkington
SIGNATUREPARKINGTON J
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Cape Town
ORCID0000-0001-6127-6826
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS111
TOTAL CITATIONS1351
AUTHOR COUNT111
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1967
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX22

  • Ranking of Cape Geophytes by Proxies for the Benefits and Costs of Harvesting their Underground Storage Organs

    Open AccessElzanne Singels, Karen Esler et al.ARTICLEHuman Ecology2026

    The Cape Floristic Region (CFR) has the world’s highest diversity of plants with underground storage organs (USOs). This rich USO flora has been proposed as a key food source for modern humans in the Late Pleistocene. For 130 Cape geophyte species, we quantified proxies for energetic benefits (USO size and nutrient content) and harvesting costs (USO depth and anti‐nutrients), then ranked species by their likely attractiveness to foragers. We iden…

  • Biomass tar, Podocarpus leaves and the diversity of southern African Stone Age adhesives – new data from Elands Bay Cave

    Open AccessPatrick Schmidt, Armelle Charrié-Duhaut et al.ARTICLEArchaeological and Anthropological…2026References: 36

    Adhesives are among the most informative archaeological artefacts for understanding the behaviour of Stone Age forages. In the southern African Middle and Later Stone Age, the botanical origin of most adhesives was identified as conifers of the genus Podocarpus . One of these identifications of Podocarpus adhesives comes from Elands Bay Cave. However, it has recently been shown that similar adhesives can be, and were, produced from many plants av…

  • The archaeological landscape of Wolwekraal Nature Reserve (South Africa)

    Open AccessJ Parkington, John E Parkington et al.ARTICLEAntiquity2026References: 3

    Newly discovered open-air sites along the Dorps River in the arid Karoo (South Africa), a region with uneven archaeological coverage, demonstrate multiple visits to this favoured habitat in the late Holocene Later Stone Age ( c . 3000–2000 BP)

  • Spatial and temporal variation in the diversity, abundance, and energetic returns of underground storage organs on the coastal lowlands of the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa

    Open AccessElzanne Singels, Tineke Kraaij et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science2026References: 29

  • A cave with agency

    Open AccessEmily-Jane Vowles, J ParkingtonARTICLESouthern African Field Archaeology2025

    Keurbos 4 is a located on the Rondegat River in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Rich in painted imagery, it is distinctive for several reasons. Its morphology and position atop a steep incline offer views from inside looking out, but not outside looking in, and afford a level of inaccessibility and seclusion. Within the cave, the rockface is pigmented by a prominent geologically formed red smear and, whilst having little by way of Late…

  • A microcontextual investigation of Later Stone Age ash deposits and associated interment of human remains at Faraoskop Rock Shelter, South Africa

    Open AccessMareike C Stahlschmidt, Mareike Stahlschmidt et al.ARTICLEArchaeological and Anthropological…2025References: 58

    The Later Stone Age site Faraoskop Rock Shelter yielded the human remains of twelve individuals in an ash-rich sedimentary sequence that also preserved anthropogenic bedding features. This geoarchaeological study is concerned with the sedimentary context of the human remains, the reconstruction of the human activities that formed the ash deposits as well as the bedding features and the paleoenvironmental conditions during site occupation. To inve…

  • The Faraoskop event

    Open AccessJ Parkington, Emma Loftus et al.ARTICLEArchaeological and Anthropological…2025Cited by: 2References: 46

    Here we make the case that the interment of twelve skeletons in a small Western Cape rock shelter should be viewed as a single event. We present evidence of the partially disarticulated, clearly overlapping arrangement of human remains and the radiocarbon dating results from the individuals that point to a hasty but coordinated burial at a critical moment in the prehistory of the Cape. The moment was marked by the earliest appearance of the pasto…

  • Reconstructing ancient Southern African mitochondrial genomes at Faraoskop

    Open AccessA Morris, Alan G Morris et al.ARTICLEArchaeological and Anthropological…2025Cited by: 2References: 63

    Twelve human skeletons, approximately 2000 years old, were recovered from the Faraoskop archaeological site in the Western Cape Province, South Africa (Manhire 1993). Several of the skeletons were well enough preserved to determine the osteological profiles (sex, age and stature etc.). Additionally, paleopathological and traumatic changes were observed on some of these skeletal remains. Given suggested context that these human remains were drawn …

  • Place, Landscape, and Recursivity

    Open AccessJ Parkington, Joe Alfers et al.ARTICLEde arte2024References: 33

  • Entangled lives, relational ontology and rock paintings

    Open AccessJ Parkington, Joe AlfersARTICLESouthern African Field Archaeology2023

    From the form and composition of painted images of humans, elephants and ‘elephanthropes’ (elephant human therianthropes) from the northern Cederberg, we propose that elephants were considered as ‘other-than-human-persons’ by painters. This is supported by the role of elephants in San stories, the ethnography of relational ontologies among hunter-gatherer communities in southern Africa and beyond, and the selective choices of painters in construc…

  • From quartz curvature to late Holocene mobility at Spring Cave, Western Cape, South Africa

    Open AccessBenjamin Davies, Matthew Douglas et al.ARTICLEArchaeological and Anthropological…2022Cited by: 1References: 50

  • Ecosystem engineering in the Quaternary of the West Coast of South Africa

    Open AccessD R Braun, J Tyler Faith et al.ARTICLEEvolutionary Anthropology Issues…2021

    Despite advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Recent inquiries suggest that human evolution reflects a long history of interconnections between the behavior of humans and their surrounding ecosystems (e.g., niche construction). Developing expectations to identify such phenomena is remar…

  • Field processing and transport costs in shellfish gathering along the Cape west coast

    Open AccessJ Parkington, Ruan Brand et al.ARTICLEQuaternary International2021

  • Cloaks and torsos

    J Parkington, Andrew PatersonARTICLEAzania Archaeological Research in…2021Cited by: 3References: 15

    Ethnographers and anthropologists have noted that no examples of group male initiation rituals have been recorded among the southern San, although they are known to have taken place further north in Angola, Botswana and Namibia. A detailed rock painting in the southwestern Cape Cederberg, South Africa, is composed in such a way that we argue that it is evidence that ‘initiation camps’ for young men did also take place in the Cape and were recorde…

  • Histological investigation of burnt bones

    Open AccessMohd Shafi Bhat, Anusuya Chinsamy et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2021Cited by: 1References: 79

    The current study examined burnt and unburnt tibiae of angulate tortoises from the intermediate and late Howiesons Poort levels at Diepkloof Rock Shelter (DRS) of Western Cape, South Africa, to ascertain heat-induced osteohistological changes. Three types of bone damage caused by fire were recognized: (a) external color change in the bones but otherwise consistent osteological and histological features to unburnt bones; (b) partially burned bones…

  • Shell Middens and Coastal Prehistory

    J Parkington, Ruan BrandCHAPTER2020

    Shell middens, the residues of shellfish gathering, consumption, and disposal in the past, have attracted the attention of archaeologists for more than one hundred and fifty years. Although there has been a tendency to view these sites as simply waste heaps, it is increasingly clear that this is usually not the case and that, sometimes, spatially meaningful arrangements of domestic debris of all kinds (fireplaces, artifacts, cooking and sleeping …

  • Forum Communication- “Reply to Antonieta Jerardino's comment on ‘Field Processing and transport costs in shellfish gathering along the Cape west coast’ by John Parkington, Ruan Brand and Taylor Nieker…

    Open AccessJ Parkington, Ruan Brand et al.ARTICLEQuaternary International2020

  • Contemporaneity and entanglement

    Open AccessJ Parkington, J Fisher et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science…2020References: 5

  • An Introduction to the Stone Age Archaeology of the Polihali Dam Area, Mokhotlong District, Lesotho

    Tim Forssman, Matt G Lotter et al.ARTICLEJournal of African Archaeology2020Cited by: 2References: 15

    Much of Lesotho’s cultural heritage has been studied as a result of dam developments. Where dams have been built, heritage studies have provided crucial data for improving our understanding of local archaeological sequences. Ahead of the construction of the Lesotho Highland Development Authority’s ( LHDA ) new Polihali Dam in Lesotho’s Mokhotlong District and following the recommendations of a heritage assessment ( CES 2014), a large-scale five-y…

  • Experimentation preceding innovation in a MIS5 Pre-Still Bay layer from Diepkloof Rock Shelter (South Africa)

    Guillaume Porraz, J Parkington et al.PREPRINT2020Cited by: 6References: 86

    In southern Africa, key technologies and symbolic behaviors develop as early as the later Middle Stone Age in MIS5. These innovations arise independently in various places, contexts and forms, until their full expression during the Still Bay and the Howiesons Poort. The Middle Stone Age sequence from Diepkloof Rock Shelter, on the West Coast of the region, preserves archaeological proxies that help unravelling the cultural processes at work. This…

  • When was silcrete heat treatment invented in South Africa

    Open AccessP Schmidt, Deano D Stynder et al.ARTICLEPalgrave Communications2020Cited by: 22References: 17

    Silcrete heat treatment, along with a suit of other innovations, have been used to argue for an early onset of modern or complex behaviours in Middle Stone Age hominins. This practice was confined to South Africa’s southern and western Cape regions where it was continuously practised since the Still Bay industry. However, the exact moment that this technological advancement occurred still remains unclear. This is partly due to the scarcity of sil…

  • Elusive Identities

    J Parkington, David Morris et al.ARTICLEJournal of Southern African Studies2019Cited by: 5

    In 2007, in order to facilitate the building and operations of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act proclaimed a large ‘astronomy reserve’ in the central Upper Karoo, a roughly rhombic space covering some 120,000 square kilometres. As it happens, this geographic reserve coincides almost exactly with a region described by |Xam prisoners of the mid 19th century as |Xam-ka! au, their homeland. We show how archival…

  • Stone Age landscape use in the Olifants River Valley, Clanwilliam, Western Cape, South Africa

    E Hallinan, J ParkingtonARTICLEAzania Archaeological Research in…2017Cited by: 28References: 160

    Stone Age surface assemblages are all too often neglected in favour of stratified, datable cave sequences, thus overlooking important insights into changing behavioural patterns at a broader scale. The Olifants River Valley (Clanwilliam, Western Cape Province, South Africa) presents a rich surface lithic record alongside excavated rockshelter occupations from the early Middle Stone Age (MSA) to the Later Stone Age (LSA). Surface surveys in the Ol…

  • Visionary animal

    J ParkingtonReferences: 1

  • Chronology of the Pleistocene deposits at Elands Bay Cave (South Africa) based on charcoals, burnt lithics, and sedimentary quartz and feldspar grains

    Chantal Tribolo, N Mercier et al.Cited by: 7